During the morning hours Dr. Taylor had her stroke, the left hemisphere of her brain was undergoing trauma from a hemorrhage and she says it took her four hours to call for help. "I didn't call 911 because the group of cells right where the hemorrhage began is right where [my memories of] numbers were," she says. As the hemorrhage in her brain's left hemisphere grew larger and larger, Dr. Taylor says she drifted in and out of her left and right brain—in between moments of reasoning and Nirvana. In a moment of clarity, she was able to remember where she kept her business cards, and while she could not speak or hear clearly, she managed to call a colleague who recognized who she was and that she was in need of help.
Once in the hospital, Dr. Taylor says she was living completely in her right brain. With no language, ego or other elements of the left brain present, she says she was experiencing life in a totally different way. "Babies don't have a left hemisphere detail developed, and animals don't have a left hemisphere detail developed—so why is [it that] they are always so happy? They are having a right hemisphere experience going on; they're not having that brain chatter," she says.
While the experience was profound, Dr. Taylor says she was quite frightened at times. She was essentially an infant in a woman's body—she didn't recognize anyone or anything and could not speak or care for herself in any way. Soon, she says she became very sensitive to the demeanors and attitudes of the nurses assigned to care for her. "I needed them to look me in the eye and touch me and to just bring their hope and their energy to me as opposed to taking it away from me," she says. One nurse in particular never made eye contact or addressed Dr. Taylor personally—essentially sucking the energy out her. "I really needed people to take responsibility for the kind of energy they brought to me," she says.
As Dr. Taylor waited for brain surgery in the three days after her stroke, her mother, G.G., arrived at her bedside. While Dr. Taylor says she "didn't know what a mother was much less who my mother was," she knew the moment G.G. entered the room that she was someone special. G.G. made eye contact with her daughter, walked to the side of her bed and crawled into it, rocking Dr. Taylor like a baby. "All I knew was this very loving, kind, generous spirit of woman came in, wrapped herself around me and just took ownership of loving me—and that was the new beginning."
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